Fargo

I finally caught up now more than a week late. Again, like last year, a pretty muted finale. But here at least it seemed like a bit of a more natural ending than s1's big karmic deaths of Billy Bob and Martin Freeman which to me felt forced (I'd have liked for Nygaard to get away with it tbh). Again though, the penultimate episode is WAY better than the end, which I don't think has to have been the case necessarily. I felt the season would've had more weight if Ted Danson had've died but then we wouldn't have gotten his explanation there about the symbols in his office, so I guess it worked.

I didn't even pick up that the beginning of the episode was a Raising Arizona reference but, of course you're right there @nictarion . I feel dumb for not realizing that. The bit where Lou shoots at Hanzee and he jumps away though and of course the guy in the car getting shot after stopping for the Blumquists were huge No Country references that I caught onto immediately. And all the Camus stuff is a reference to the Man Who Wasn't There which is very Camus-influenced. And of course Lou and Peggy driving together was a gender-swapped version of Frances McDormand and Peter Stormare's chat at the end of the movie Fargo.

I also didn't pick up on Hanzee becoming the mob boss from s1. In fact I don't even remember what mob bosses there were in s1. I did pick up that the deaf kid and his friend were Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench though because the sign language and hair colour matched.

I need to go back, if I ever have the time, and see what Hawley's deal was with the Coens. Even tho I thought I liked the 1st season I was a bit off-put by the 're-imagining' of film Fargo. I know this was the intent. I thought they did it cleverly enough, but some things seemed forced.
For instance does the snow-satchel of money-fence story have any relevance to the first season except be imported and re-jiggered?
I probably missed miles of conversation about this but that felt like a useless loop except for getting Duluth into the story.
Watching the first season I was riveted not because of the fantasy-story but the actors! BBT of course, but I didn't realize that was Keith Carradine as  Lou Solverson until about episode 5! All in all I liked this alternate-universe 'FARGO' , it was so off center and peculiar well composed so I was entertained. 
Did I miss something in the plot? When  Lester plants evidence to frame his brother. Chazz's son sees him in the house. I figured this would be a plot point followed up on, but it is not, was it?

I thought season 2 started off well but did not have well done ending.

By the by liked the ending to season 1, they under cut my expectations.

Picked up on most of them (never seen Hudsucker Proxy though), but that list is missing Betsy's dream of the future in the season finale, which was clearly homage to Raising Arizona.

Oh it's missing a ton of them. But I was still pretty happy seeing this on reddit. My favourite one is still hearing "the Kanutzens" mentioned in one of the later episodes as family friends of the Solversons. Because that's the name of the family in Moorhead Minnesota that Bunny Lebowski ran away from.

Awesome news.